NEAR Protocol (@NEARProtocol): The Privacy Renaissance Runs on NEAR

The Privacy Renaissance Runs on NEAR Privacy has moved to the center of the crypto conversation, and this past month NEAR highlighted its central role in the privacy narrative, from confidential execution to private inference. Universal Send brought confidential payments to near.com: pay anyone, in any asset, on any chain, without exposing your wallet activity. $VVV went live on @near_intents, the Government of Bermuda partnered with @near_ai on secure public-sector AI, and Arthur Hayes and Illia Polosukhin made the privacy case on The Rollup. With cumulative NEAR Intents volume now past $19B, here's the full May rundown. Featured News: Arthur Hayes and Illia Polosukhin on the Privacy Renaissance Maelstrom's Arthur Hayes (@CryptoHayes) NEAR Co-founder Illia Polosukhin (@ilblackdragon) joined The Rollup (@therollupco) to make the case that privacy is becoming the defining requirement for onchain markets. Public chains expose every order's size, direction, and timing, which keeps serious capital off-chain. Confidential Intents finally brings exchange-grade confidentiality to cross-chain DeFi. WATCH ON YOUTUBE $VVV Is Live on NEAR Intents and near.com $VVV, the token of privacy-first AI platform Venice (@AskVenice), is now live on NEAR Intents and near.com, swappable across 35+ chains and 135+ assets. The listing pairs with NEAR AI providing private inference to Venice, connecting confidential AI and confidential cross-chain execution across one stack. SWAP $VVV ON NEAR.COM Universal Send: Confidential Payments Are Live on near.com Confidential payments are live on near.com with Universal Send. Pay anyone in any asset, on any chain, without exposing your wallet activity. Open near.com, scan a QR code, and pay with what you hold. The recipient receives the asset they want. One confirmation, confidential by default. TRY UNIVERSAL SEND The Government of Bermuda and NEAR AI Partner to Deploy AI-Powered Public Services The Government of Bermuda and NEAR AI announced a partnership to deploy secure AI across public services, launching with an assistant that lets public servants process sensitive citizen data on NEAR AI Cloud's private inference infrastructure. Queries run inside hardware-enforced enclaves where the host OS, GPU operator, and NEAR AI itself are cryptographically locked out. READ THE ANNOUNCEMENT Around the Ecosystem NEAR Intents surpassed $19B in all-time cross-chain volume, across 35+ chains and 135+ assets. near.com has processed $209M+ in confidential volume over the past 30 days. USDC is now live in the NEAR AI Agent Market, with confidential execution through Confidential Intents to power private stablecoin settlement for agentic payments. IronClaw v0.28 "IronClaw Reborn" is live, with a rebuilt runtime, isolated tool calls, outbound approval, WeChat support, and thinking for Ollama. NEAR AI shipped automatic PII anonymization, a context-aware classifier that strips names, emails, credentials, and API keys before a prompt reaches frontier models. NEAR AI and FailSafe released AttackBench, an open-source adaptive benchmark testing AI agents against LLM-powered adversaries. IronClaw recorded the fewest violations of any framework tested. near.com referrals are live: refer a trader and both sides earn 10% of their transaction spend, paid in $NEAR. Introducing dynamic resharding. The upcoming protocol upgrade 2.13 will enable the network to add shards automatically as demand grows. How NEAR is preparing for the quantum era. A post-quantum-safe signing scheme (FIPS-204 / ML-DSA) is planned for testnet by end of Q2 2026 as part of protocol upgrade 2.13. The Bitwise NEAR Staking ETP drew roughly $3M in inflows, reaching approximately $36M in AUM, per Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley. Trezu launched Confidential Treasuries, bringing private team treasuries, payroll, and transactions across 35+ chains, powered by Confidential Intents. NEAR Intents is now integrated into RocketX as a swap route provider. A technical breakdown of how Confidential Intents works, covering the private shard architecture, execution flow, and key design decisions. From Agents to Authors, a NEAR essay on the coming "Authorship Era," where agents execute and humans own the output. Watch the NEAR Miami session playlist from Consensus 2026. Media and Coverage Bankless covered NEAR protocol’s momentum, tracing increased network usage and buyback-driven value capture. Sal Ternullo, CEO of SVRN, joined Bankless to discuss NEAR Intents, tokenomics, privacy, and commercializing the NEAR ecosystem. Illia Polosukhin joined Unchained to deep dive into Confidential Intents and the rise of AI-powered exploits across DeFi in 2026. CCN interviewed George Zeng, GM of NEAR AI, on user-owned AI and IronClaw, NEAR AI’s secure agent harness.